Racial Disparities in Access to Mortgage Credit: Does Governance Matter?*

Objectives. This article examines the effect of community organizing on the likelihood that minority borrowers pursue home mortgage credit from regulated lenders. Methods. Governance perspectives suggest that community organizations exert significant influence on policy outcomes. We use logistic regression with interaction terms to test the effect of community organizing on the lending outcomes of minority borrowers. We use a matched control sample of cities, drawing on 2004 loan data from two midwestern cities similar in racial and economic composition but with different histories of organizing around the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). Results. We find differential effects based on an applicant's race or ethnicity. Overall, African‐American applicants are less likely to pursue mortgage credit for home ownership from regulated lenders than their white, non‐Hispanic counterparts. However, African Americans seeking mortgage credit in a city with a history of CRA organizing are more likely to apply to regulated lenders than their racial counterparts in a city without CRA organizing. However, while organizing reduces the disparities between white and African‐American applicants, a gap still remains. Conclusion. African‐American borrowers living in cities with a history of community organizing around CRA appear more likely to pursue mortgage credit from traditional, regulated lenders, suggesting that governance matters.     

Testing the Parent–Adolescent Acculturation Discrepancy Hypothesis: A Five‐Wave Longitudinal Study

This 2½‐year, 5‐wave longitudinal study tests the hypothesis that acculturation discrepancies between Hispanic immigrant parents and adolescents would lead to compromised family functioning, which would then lead to problematic adolescent outcomes. Recent‐immigrant Hispanic parent–adolescent dyads (N = 302) completed measures of acculturation and family functioning. Adolescents completed measures of positive youth development, depressive symptoms, problem behavior, and substance use. Results indicated that Time 1 discrepancies in Hispanic culture retention, and linear trajectories in some of these discrepancies, negatively predicted adolescent positive youth development, and positively predicted adolescent depressive symptoms and binge drinking, indirectly through adolescent‐reported family functioning. The vast majority of effects were mediated rather than direct, supporting the acculturation discrepancy hypothesis. Implications for further research and intervention are discussed.     

The Field of American Media Sociology: Origins,Resurrection, and Consolidation

This contribution is written against the backdrop of the historic dispersal of early American media sociology out from the core concerns of the discipline and into various importer academic disciplines (including communication, journalism, and media studies) and an ever‐growing pervasiveness of media in everyday life which is reflected by a resurgence of sociological scholarship in the United States since the early 2000s. The article divides the field in works that study media inwards – along the threefold dimensions of production and technologies, communication and discourse, reception and effects – and works that study media outwards. We argue that this latter perspective, examining broader theoretical, methodological, and substantive social implications of mass‐mediated communication, is the most promising one for a mature field of American media sociology. On this basis, we conclude with some suggestions regarding possible new, and as of yet understudied, lines of inquiry for future media sociologists.     

What We Are Talking About When We Talk About Social Media: A Framework for Study

Social media continues to grow as a focus of social, organizational, and scholarly interest, yet there is little agreement as to what constitutes social media and how it can be effectively analyzed. We review various definitions of social media and note that much of the confusion regarding social media comes from conflation between social media types, platforms, and activities. To facilitate investigations of social media, we debunk common social media myths and review the relationship between social media and several prominent sociological concerns. We conclude by reflecting on directions for future research on social media.     

An examination of the impact of maladaptive coping on the association between stressor type and alcohol use in college

Objective: Examine the impact of maladaptive coping style on the association between source of stress (academic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, environmental) and alcohol use (consumption, heavy episodic drinking, driving under the influence) among college students. Participants: 1,027 college students completed an online survey in April 2014. Methods: To test the mediating effects of maladaptive coping on the association between academic stress and alcohol use variables, indirect effects were examined using the PROCESS analytical framework for SPSS. Results: Maladaptive coping and academic stress were associated with alcohol use outcomes. Moreover, maladaptive coping mediated the relationship between academic stress and two of three alcohol use outcomes (consumption, heavy episodic drinking). Conclusions: Among college students, the association between academic stress and alcohol use may be driven by maladaptive coping. College students may benefit from interventions that seek to improve coping skills, potentially alleviating the burden of academic stress and decreasing problematic alcohol use.     

Revisiting Violence in New Destinations: Exploring the Drop in Latino Homicide Victimization in Emerging Immigrant Communities, 2000 to 2010

The turn of the twentieth century brought important demographic shifts among Latinos, including increasing settlement of both foreign-born and domestic Latinos into “new destination” regions and communities with little previous exposure to such populations. In turn, some scholars find higher rates of Latino victimization in these new destination communities, but there is little empirical research exploring whether and how these same locales fare today. Our goal is to address this gap in the literature by examining how lethal violence against Latinos in new immigrant destination communities has changed over the 2000 to 2010 decade. Using data from the National Vital Statistics System, we construct hybrid fixed- and random-effects models to examine the predictors of changes in Latino homicide victimization over time. Results suggest that (1) despite the turmoil of the Great Recession, new destinations experienced a sizable drop in Latino victimization, (2) this drop has resulted in new destinations now having lower levels of Latino victimization than other destination types, and (3) 70% of this change is attributable to changes in Latino family structure, including married and extended families, as well as changes in language use in new destinations. We conclude by discussing our findings and their implications for researchers and policymakers.     

Police recognition strikes: Illegal and ill-fated

This study investigates the relationship between strike activity by nonunion public employees and unionization. This study examines strike activity and unionization rates of some 600 nonunion municipal police departments from 1972 to 1978 and finds that recognition strikes occur primarily where bargaining laws provide little or no protection of bargaining rights for municipal police. These strikes, however, do not help nonunion police gain recognition. The author thanks John Delaney for helpful comments on this paper.     

Evaluation of independent-living programs

The program report that states must submit to the federal government under the federal Title IV-E Independent-Living Initiative is, in essence, a program evaluation report and will require comprehensive program and evaluation data to complete. Because the program report will be a key factor in determining the future of this federal initiative, it is important that states improve their information system capability to generate the range of necessary data. This article offers detailed suggestions for ways in which states could establish their independent-living program information systems to produce program and evaluation data; and presented two examples of approaches to evaluating the Title IV-E independent-living program, one in Pennsylvania and another in Texas. These states were selected for the purpose of illustrating two different approaches and not necessarily for the presentation of exemplary evaluation practices.     

Degrees of (Self-)Exploitation: Learning to Labour in the Neoliberal University

Much has been written on the neoliberalization of the academy on the one hand and precarious creative labour/work in the culture industries on the other, but there has been comparatively little writing which makes explicit the intimate links between these two sociological phenomena and how they have come to complement and reinforce one another. Taking as a case study a new postgraduate MA course in Self-Publishing, this article aims to fill this gap, arguing that fundamental to learning to labour in the neoliberal university is both ready acquiescence to exploitation and further willingness to self-exploit on the part of both staff and students. Furthermore, incumbents of a profoundly unequal and managerial knowledge hierarchy benefit from the introduction of programmes which neither train students vocationally nor educate them liberally. This, in turn, threatens the autonomy within institutions of higher education while simultaneously undermining future artistic and intellectual flourishing.     

Deceit,diversity, or mobilization?: Intra-ethnic diversity and changing patterns in Florida's Hispanic Vote

What explains President Bush's increased vote in the State of Florida in the 2004 election? A common perception is that implementation of electronic voting machines and a surge in GOP registration increased Bush's vote margins relative to the 2000 election. In this paper we offer an alternative explanation: massive Puerto Rican immigration combined with successful Republican mobilization of this group explains about 14% of the increase in Bush's margin of victory—approximately 50,000 votes. Scholars’ failure to account for intra-ethnic diversity, by employing a “panethnic” approach that treats Latinos as having identical political preferences, leads scholars to overlook the important role of Hispanic subconstituencies in the 2004 election.